


It Takes A Year

by Quaggy



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Gen, Grief, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Parent Death, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 07:04:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7304395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quaggy/pseuds/Quaggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josh gets used to life after his father dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Takes A Year

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published April 27, 2008 in a friend-locked entry on LJ. This is the first time I'm posting it more openly. It's personal, written in the days and months afterwards when it was easier to borrow Josh's voice than it was to write about my own loss more directly. 
> 
> I still miss him.

After the service, Aunt Sarah, his mother’s oldest sister, put her arms around him and told him “Now it starts.” Everyone he knows who has lost a parent has told him the same thing. It takes a year. A year of birthdays, holidays and special occasions without him. A year before you can get used to missing him. He supposes it must be true. He tries to remember if it was the same with Joanie, but he thinks he was too young to fully understand death and too guilty to fully be able to grieve.

He moves slower, as if the great weight in his heart is dragging down his entire body. After an eternity, he finally moves from the edge of the bed, because though no one would fault him if he took another day, he knows his father would want him to be strong. To get the Real Deal elected. But it’s still late in the morning before he can bring himself to shower.

He puts on the air of normalcy. Walking to work, buying coffee, but a part of him is baffled that life continues on as normal. That total strangers have no clue that his father is gone. That nothing will ever be the same. Yet, from all outward appearances, it is.

Still, coming back to work was much easier that he expected. A surprising number of his colleagues have lost one or both of their parents. They don’t even have to tell him. He just knows because they are the ones that say exactly the right thing and at exactly the right time. It’s like he suddenly part of some deranged club, which is both comforting and sort of terrible, when you consider what the requirement for membership is. C.J. stops in periodically with some trivial bit of information that is guaranteed to make him smile, whether it is a polling number or a story about Sam and the coffee machine fiasco. Though she never talks about her mother or his father, he knows what she is doing. But, as wonderful as everyone has been, he is the most grateful for Toby. Toby has been solid rock. He feels sometimes that the speechwriter his willing him his energy. The man, who he had never quite considered to be his friend until now, had hugged him the day he came back. It should have been awkward and weird, but it wasn’t. Now he can’t imagine a day when he will not call Toby Zeigler his brother. Sometimes wonders if he should give credit to his father for that.

Of course there’s the ones that just don’t get it. The ones who don’t care or just don’t know what they are talking about. There was one well-meaning intern who blabbered on about his own grandfather’s death and sharing what he thought was insightful platitudes, not realizing he was spouting nothing but new age-mumbo jumbo that did nothing to even touch the deeper issues of loss. He had to restrain himself from kicking the kid in the shins. Instead he just let him talk until Donna came and rescued him with a lie about a meeting. But people like that are surprisingly few and far between. Most give him space when he needs it and are there the moment that he asks. He is grateful for that.

Without even realizing it, four weeks have passed and then four more and then even more than that. It feels like eons have elapsed, but he can count the months on one hand. The fact that he is relieved that so little time has actually past and that he’s doing okay, all things considered, probably means that he isn’t doing as well as he would like. 

It surprises him at odd times. He never forgets. Not one day goes by without some thought of his father, but, far away from Connecticut, it’s almost like nothing has changed. Dad is still alive and just too tired to come to the phone right now. But he knows in his heart that his hero is gone. He will never again see his father’s eyes light up when he enters the room or hear the sound of his laughter fill every corner. His father will not be there to see his only son get married or become a father himself. If he thinks about it too much, he gets lost in the world of grief. It’s better to remember what was, as painful as it is right now, than to remember what could have been. 

But he's getting used to missing his dad. And that’s all he can ask for, really.


End file.
